# Mark Twain and the Christian Right. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 29, 2020, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657 "2020-05-29T10:57:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/1 "2020-05-29T10:57:01Z")
I don’t presently have a cite. But I’ve read about it in more than one place. Conservative Christian’s just don’t like Mark Twain. They ban his books in their children’s schools, they quote him on religion and the Bible. They just make him a lightening rod for criticism. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835– April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a critic and a satirist. He was a little critical of organized religion. But I think he believed in God. And his apparent lack of faith might have been due to some tragedies he faced in life. A social worker once told me, it’s sometimes hard to have faith, when faced with tragedy. It’s not the person’s fault. So why are radical christians so critical of the man? He lived over a hundred years ago after all. And he was a remarkable author and true American hero. :):):):):):)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/2 "2020-05-29T12:41:20Z")
_Huckleberry Finn_ has primarily been banned due to “racial/racist language”, which doesn’t strike me as a typical Christian Right complaint. > **[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain — Banned Library](https://www.bannedlibrary.com/podcast/2016/6/26/banned-61-the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain)** > > One of the most banned books of all time going back over a 130 years, let's learn about a little boy's life after faking his own murder and meeting up with a slave. When it comes to recent criticism of literature from said group, Twain seems far less of a lightning rod than, say, J. K. Rowling. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/3 "2020-05-29T14:26:30Z")
Twain was skeptical of religion in general but was often anti-Catholic in his writing - not at all surprising for a Protestant in the 19th century. These days we might see anti-Catholic writing and consider it broadly anti-Christian, but that’s not necessarily the tone it was written in. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/4 "2020-05-29T14:45:21Z")
He had a few things to say about Mormonism in Roughing It. > [@Mark Twain](#): > > All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/5 "2020-05-29T15:18:17Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > I don’t presently have a cite. But I’ve read about it in more than one place. Conservative Christian’s just don’t like Mark Twain. They ban his books in their children’s schools, they quote him on religion and the Bible. They just make him a lightening rod for criticism. > > Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835– April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a critic and a satirist. He was a little critical of organized religion. But I think he believed in God. And his apparent lack of faith might have been due to some tragedies he faced in life. A social worker once told me, it’s sometimes hard to have faith, when faced with tragedy. It’s not the person’s fault. > > So why are radical christians so critical of the man? He lived over a hundred years ago after all. And he was a remarkable author and true American hero. > > :):):):):):)🙂 I don’t have a cite either, but it’s because he used a pseudonym. Conservative Christians are very against pseudonyms. Or maybe I made that up because it’s impossible to explain something I can’t find examples of. Googling doesn’t really work because any other criticism drowns in discussions about bannings of Huck Finn due to the use of the n-word. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/6 "2020-05-29T15:26:17Z")
Twain wrote an entire book attacking (humorously, I note) Christian Science, too. I don’t think I read anything of Twain’s attacking modern Catholicism. He did lay into the Church in his _Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court_, but he was clearlty attacking the all-powerful Church of those times and poking fun at religious ignorance (as with his section on the Holy Fountain). Twain really wasn’t fond of religious hypocrisy and ignorance. You get a very clear sense from all his writings that, as a child, he was taught from books that elevated the “Good Boy” and showed the “Bad Boy” getting his Just Desserts. But he realized early in life that Life Didn’t Work That Way, and the Evil frequently prospered while the Good languished. He wrote humorous essays pointing this out. He realized that there was a lure of the Forbidden, and loved the company of socially rejected boys like Tom Blankenship 9the model for Huckleberry Finn). So Twain presented a disdainful view even of the Protestant Faith he’d been raised in, at least when it was plainly claiming things he could see weren’t true. He had a distinct moral code, and contrasted real practical morality with proper-looking by “for show” morality as practiced by apparently religious citizens. Have a read through the posthumous collection _Letters from the Earth_ for his observations on Human morals. Read his essay _What is Man_ and the various versions of _The Mysterious Stranger_. In his old age, especially after the heart-breaking deaths of his daughters and his wife, his writings got considerably darker. On the other hand, he recognized the good done in the name of religion. he appears to have praise for King Arthur’s actions in the smallpox hut in Connecticut Yankee, for instance. He made Joan of Arc his heroine in his novel about her. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/7 "2020-05-29T15:28:09Z")
> [@naita](#): > > I don’t have a cite either, but it’s because he used a pseudonym. Conservative Christians are very against pseudonyms. Like “Simon called Peter” and Paul (Saul of Tarsus)? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/8 "2020-05-29T15:55:38Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > _Huckleberry Finn_ has primarily been banned due to “racial/racist language”, which doesn’t strike me as a typical Christian Right complaint. > [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain — Banned Library](http://www.bannedlibrary.com/podcast/2016/6/26/banned-61-the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain) The irony of such censorship would not be lost on Clemens. As for the objections of the “Christian Right”, they stem largely from the posthumously published [_Letters From Earth_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_the_Earth) for reasons evident to anyone who has read the book. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/9 "2020-05-29T16:29:38Z")
I’m a conservative Christian who has been around other conservative Christian my whole life, and I have never heard anyone criticize Mark Twain. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/10 "2020-05-29T16:52:17Z")
I’ve long suspected that most of the bannings of Huck Finn are actually because the people doing the banning disapprove of the positive portrayal of Jim, and just use the word used to describe him as a polite fiction for why they’re banning it, so they can say they’re not racists. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/11 "2020-05-29T16:56:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve long suspected that most of the bannings of Huck Finn are actually because the people doing the banning disapprove of the positive portrayal of Jim, and just use the word used to describe him as a polite fiction for why they’re banning it, so they can say they’re not racists. I’m sure that number is nonzero, but it’s also not all of them, given some NAACP chapters have called for banning. But “most” vs “some” is going to be hard to tease out. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/12 "2020-05-29T16:57:41Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The irony of such censorship would not be lost on Clemens. > > As for the objections of the “Christian Right”, they stem largely from the posthumously published [_Letters From Earth_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_the_Earth) for reasons evident to anyone who has read the book. This was some funny clever stuff when I was 15. I should give it a re-read and see how it holds up. But I’ve not seen it get much attention, let alone criticism. But I also haven’t been looking. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/13 "2020-05-29T17:05:54Z")
Much like finding something in the Bible to justify any position one wants to take, we can also find something in Twain to justify anything. In this case, Huck can either embrace the lessons he’s been taught and turn Jim in, or turn his back on them to save Jim. > [@](#): > > I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. > > It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: > > “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. > > It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/14 "2020-05-29T17:28:28Z")
My WAG is that many Christians are suspicious of sparky, witty sarcastic people like Twain, because such people are generally the likeliest to be religion-skeptic or to poke fun of the faith. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/15 "2020-05-29T17:43:43Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > _Huckleberry Finn_ has primarily been banned due to “racial/racist language”, which doesn’t strike me as a typical Christian Right complaint. The “Christian Right” in the form we see it today is mostly a 1970s invention. In the US at least, churches tended to lean left if anything historically. Right-wing tendencies tended to be associated more with anti-communist fervor (which existed in both political wings to some degree) and/or racism. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/16 "2020-05-29T20:21:14Z")
Twain was very liberal for his time. He was a believer of evolution and friends with Darwin. While many Christians today can reconcile their religious beliefs with evolution, it was not so during Twain’s lifetime. He wrote and believed that the God of the Bible was a malevolent god. His daughter commented after they as a family were visiting Europe and having dinner with the German emperor, that pretty soon, there would no one left that Twain could become acquainted with but God. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/17 "2020-05-31T02:50:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > My WAG is that many Christians are suspicious of sparky, witty sarcastic people like Twain, because such people are generally the likeliest to be religion-skeptic or to poke fun of the faith. My parents were definitely white, and Christian, and right wing. They liked MT because he was sparky, witty, sarcastic and abolitionist. My mother read Tom Sawyer to us when we were young. On the other hand, the left is notoriously Humorless and Politically Correct. Either you’ve mixed up the Left and the Right, or our assessments are colored by our politically positions. ---
**Author:** ![Dandan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@Dandan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dandan)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/18 "2020-05-31T12:52:10Z")
Mel, the LEFT is notoriously humorless? Perhaps you could try to supply a list of sidesplitting conservative humorists? I sure could use a laugh. Dan ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/19 "2020-05-31T13:27:56Z")
> [@Dandan](#): > > Mel, the LEFT is notoriously humorless? Perhaps you could try to supply a list of sidesplitting conservative humorists? I sure could use a laugh. > > Dan Well, there’s Al Capp (creator of _Li’l Abner_) who took shots at liberal caricatures in [_The Hardhat’s Bedtime Story Book_](https://www.amazon.com/Hardhats-Bedtime-Story-Book/dp/0060613114). He was very specifically going after what he perceived as humorlessness among leftist radicals. It’s as much a product of its time, 1971, as a topical editorial cartoon. It’s… amusing, I guess. Certainly light years beyond _Mallard Fillmore_. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657/20 "2020-05-31T13:59:05Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > Like “Simon called Peter” and Paul (Saul of Tarsus)? :rolleyes: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mark-twain-and-the-christian-right/854657.md?page=2)